technically challenged asking for advice about mods

[IkeCoast]

Spyder, if I have understood what you explain here, what you did wasn't an uninstallation, it was rather a termination with extreme prejudice, and your skills as a hitman are, hmmmmmmmmm, slightly disappointing, because you left survivors and now they're going full Iñigo Montoya on you.

 

You should have used Oblivion's and Steam's Uninstallers. Manually deleting folders and files is not an uninstallation, period. Sorry for being so harsh with you, it's my Cruella deVil genes.

 

Another thing: in order to be able to use a previous savegame with a fresh install of the game, the savegame must be a Clean Save. Not a clean shave, that's another thing.

 

How to perform a Clean Save:

 

In-game, drop everything on your inventory that is mod-related. Keep in your inventory just vanilla items. Save. Quit the game.

 

Start up the game again, load the last save. Make sure you have no modded items with you, nor any Companion or Follower following you. Go to some secure place, one not touched by mods, ideally Hawkhaven (open up the Console, type coc hawkhaven), and save there. Without moving your character from the spot he was when you saved, exit the game.

 

Open up your Mod Manager or the Oblivion standard Loader (the one that lets you access the Data Files window). DEACTIVATE ALL YOUR MODS, including the Unofficial Patches.

 

Start again the game. Load the last savegame. Ignore the warning popup about missing files. As soon as the savegame is loaded, DO NOT MOVE YOUR CHARACTER. Save again in a new slot. Exit the game.

 

Now, it's advisable shutting down your computer and waiting five minuts before rebooting it, so it can completely purge both the RAM and the cached memory.

 

Once rebooted, start the game, load the LAST savegame, you will notice that this time there's no warning popup, move your character around, without exiting Hawkhaven, and then SAVE AGAIN.

 

This last savegame is the Clean Save.

 

(Side note: perhaps you want to maintain in your Clean Save some mods active. Well, that's not advisable, but if you insist: take note of the mods you will keep and THE PLACE ON YOUR LOAD ORDER they are. When you have the new fresh installation, before loading the game, make sure the mods are properly installed and in THE EXACT LOAD ORDER SPOTS they were before. Failure to do that means CTD).

 

The reason for doing all of this is to get rid of mod dependencies which will cause crash to desktop, and persistent legacy effects like the one you mention. This is a "corrupted savegame".

 

Once you have your Clean Save, uninstall the game, and I mean use the Uninstaller provided with it, let it be via the shortcut icon, via Steam or via CCleaner.

 

Once Oblivion is uninstalled, uninstall Steam via its own uninstaller.

 

Run CCleaner to get rid of orphan files and temporary files. Run CCleaner Registry Cleaner. Run AGAIN the Registry Cleaner. Run that as many times needed until CCleaner tells you "No problems found".

 

Shut down your computer. Wait five minutes. Many people will tell you that it's not needed to shut down and waiting, but it will not harm your system, and more often than once it will actually help.

 

Reboot and start the installation of everything.

 

And then, throw your laptop down the balcony, find a cool reclusive monastery and dedicate your life to silent contemplation. Your wife will be displeased, but whatever.

 

Cheers!

[spyder7723]

after a good nights sleep. and waking up to fresh coffee already made(my wife is the BEST) I sat down with a fresh outlook and I believe I found my problem. when I first downloaded obmm it went into programs (the default steam location) I uninstalled it, and reinstalled it to the new location I put steam in, gave it administrative rights, and voila. im able to use it to create omod files out of the unofficial patch downloads. the darnified ui came as I omod file so that explains why it was so easy and yet the patches confused the crap out of me. I *think* this will work. and if it doesn't, I atleast have a better understanding of things after viewing a few youtube videos. being able to literally see a mod being installed made it a lot easier to understand.

[spyder7723]

alright. so another fresh install after uninstalling, and removing everything that the installers didn't remove with regedit. including, oblibion, steam(EVERYTHING related to steam) and save files just in case(put the most recent before I tried patching on a flash drive but wont put it back in, certainly not till im more comfortable with things). used ccleaner to clear up any other registry errors system wide. did a defrag. rebooted. before I installed I did more registry cleaning. getting rid of left over folders, etc etc. defragged and rebooted again. I want to make a "safe" copy of vanilla oblivion before installing anything else. will a copy/paste to a file on the desktop work? or will it take something more sophisticated?

[Striker879]

The only thing I find about using the desktop for everything is that eventually your desktop is completely covered in icons and then you can't find anything. I set up folders for everything using Windows Explorer. In my case I have a separate hard drive just for Data so on it there's an Oblivion_Downloads folder, Oblivion_Installed_Mods folder, Oblivion_Saves_Backup, Oblivion_Data_Backup ... you get the picture. Each of those top level folders has sub-folders ... organize to your heart's content.

 

With two Explorer windows open I can right click Copy/Paste between source and target without needing to re-navigate each step of the way.

[spyder7723]

right, I try to keep a neat desktop also. but it shouldn't matter where I put the folder, just as long a its not in the same directory as steam and oblivion. but simple copy and paste of the entire oblivion folder will work right?

[IkeCoast]

Yes, Spyder, provided you copy the ENTIRE Oblivion installation folder should be right. I also suggest that you also backup the MyGames\Oblivion folder (the one where the savegames and the ini file are located). Just fire up the Oblivion Loader, configure the settings to your liking, no need to start a new game, once the configuration is done you can exit Oblivion, and then do the backup of the Oblivion installation folder and the Game folder.

 

And putting too much things on the Desktop adds strain to the OS performance. The more bloated the Desktop, the more slow and unstable the OS is. Do not use the Desktop as a warehouse. Best thing is creating a C:\Backups folder and put all that things there.

 

Why don't you try to discover if the Profile Managers are compatible with Steam? Then you could make all the backup procedure with a single mouseclic.

 

Cheers!

[spyder7723]

ok, so I got my back up set just in case I screw something up again. what do I need? obmm, wyre bash, and obse right? does the order of installation matter? and is there anything else I may need before installing the unofficial patches?

[Striker879]

The order should be vanilla game, patched up to version 1.2.0416 (happens automatically with Steam I think). If you have the Shivering Isles install it at the same time ... you can't add it later (or at least that's how the disk version works, once you patch the non-SI game to 1.2.0416 you need to uninstall before you can add SI).

 

Next OBMM and/or Wrye Bash. They will come in handy installing the UOP and UOPs for the DLCs later. Archive invalidation can be handled by either OBMM (see my previous post) or Wrye Bash ... only use one, they both work equally and considering I've already gone through the OBMM method why not that one?

 

OBSE can be installed after the UOPs. Install it manually following the Steam install instructions found in the file obse_readme.txt that will be in the extracted download.

[spyder7723]

on my version, shivering isles and all dlc content is downloaded and installed at the same time as vanilla. as soon as you exit the prison sewers you get quests and keys/books/notes/etc to the wizards tower, the castle, vile lair, the thieves pirate ship thing and horse armor. probably some more I forgot about there. and its version 1.2.0416.

 

so if i understand its obmm and/or wyre bash first. then the three unofficial patches. asumming the order should be, oblivion, shivering isles, and lastly the dlc patch? and that's probably a good time to back up another safe copy before attempting any mods. any personal suggestions on which mods to add first? vilva and pack donkeys I assume. but then what?

[IkeCoast]

Hey, Spyder!

Since Steam installs Shivering Isles and all the Official DLCS at the same time it installs Oblivion, and the final version of the game you got is the correct one, you can forget about the Official Patches. Just istall (in this order) the three Unofficial Patches, and then, install OBSE and Blockhead. Now, start the game (looks like you already completed the Tutorial), meddle with the game options, save and exit. This is to update your Oblivion.ini in your Games folder.

Now backup your Oblivion installation and game folders, do not bother installing OBMM or Wrye Bash before back-uping because both will need reinstallation if/when you need to restore the backup.

Oblivion Mod Manager and/or Wrye Bash do not need to be installed in any particular order, since they are not part of the game.

For a regular gaming experience, installing and managing mods, OBMM is thoroughly enough. Wrye Bash is needed for the Bashed Patch, but there are other utilities (TES4Edit for example) that handle this too and are far simpler than Wrye Bash, which is a very versatile and powerful modding tool intended for those who love to really put Oblivion on its modding knees.

So, summarinzing, the correct installation order for the game in a Steam version is:

1) The game, with Shivering Isles and all the DLCs as provided by Steam.
2) Making sure that after Steam has installed all, the game version is 1.2.0416. Install the Official DLCs Patches.
3) Install the Unofficial Patches for the game and all the DLCs.
4) Install OBSE (manually) and then Blockhead (also, manually).
5) (Optional) Configure your Game Options to generate a correct Oblivion.ini in your MyGames folder.
6) Back-up your installation (including the MyGames folder).
7) Install the Mod Manager and additional modding utilities (like TES4Edit or the Construction Set (plus the Construction Set Extender) you would wish. The additional modding utilities are not mandatory, you always can install them later if necessity arises.
7a) No matter if you haven't added any mods yet, as soon as you have your Mod Manager installed, run its Archive Invalidation procedure. Select the BSA Redirection method, with the Reset BSA Timestamps option enabled. This is a one-time procedure, you won't need to do it anymore.
8 )Play a little, without ANY Mods, so you can have a Clean Save since the start.
9) Start adding your mods.
10) Do not consider using NexusModManager (NMM) with Oblivion. NMM is not intended to work with such an old game, it's for newer games like Skyrim.

About recommended mods, you need to bear in mind something important: in this past year 2014, the Oblivion Mod community has seen a strong resurgence and lots of new, modern and improved mods have emerged. Many of the most popular mods since them have been surpassed with newer ones that made them obsolete, for instance the ever-popular OBGE is now outdated thanks to Alenet's Oblivion Reloaded. If you come to find a mod that interests you, look for the last time it was updated. If it's an old mod, better come here and ask us before you download and install it.

Examples of recommended mods (recommended by me, at least):

Graphics enhancement:

Quarl's Texture Pack to have high quality, real HD textures in-game.
Oblivion Reloaded by Alenet to have HD special effects, better-looking water and light effects, et al. This is a Complete package, if you install it, you don't need any other (like the aforementioned OBGE). This package contains all the previous plug-ins by Alenet, no further plugins needed.

Gameplay enhancements:

There are lots of them, like Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, Midas Magick Spells, et al. I don't use any, so I can't really recommend any.
Bag of Holding to forget the Emcumbrance limit and carry all-you-want with you.

Characters enhancements:

The vanilla bodies and faces are, simply put, horrid. In order to have good-looking characters, you need a pair of Body Replacers (one for males, another for females) and a faces overhaul.

Male body replacer is easy, there's just one for them (with some variants), the Robert2 Male Body Replacer. Don't forget to download and install also the Outfit Replacer, available at the same page I linked.

The options for female bodies are insanely diverse. If you prefer realism over booliciousness, I recommend Robert2 Female Body Replacer (and the corresponding Outfit Replacer). If you prefer something more luscious and curvaceous and with more, er, volume, then HGEC is your choice.

For the faces, if you go for realism and not Fairy Tales or Manga-Anime looks, the choice is clear: Oblivion Character Overhaul v2 by Nuska. Period.

Installing the Body Replacers in conjunction with OCO is tricky, don't hesitate to come here screaming for help, we will help you straight away (after we slap you in the face to stop the nervous outburst).

Cosmetic mods: all of them are incompatible with OCO v2, so unless you know how to merge and bash them together, or manually adding assets using the Construction Set, forget them.

Playable races: I strongly recommend you the Abysmer Playable Race if you want something different from the vanilla races or the omnipresent Cute Sexy Female Voluptuous Elves. This race is a masterpiece, one of the more exquisitely crafted works of art you will find in the whole world. Striker, stop giggling, please.

Companions:

Oblivion lacks of a proper traditional Companions system. Fortunately, there are a whole array of ready-to-use Companion Mods. Some of them require the CMPartners framework, some of them don't. By the same talented artist that brought us the marvelous Abysmer Playable Race, we have a set of impressive CM Companions (all of them redheaded). Striker, I'm earing you laughing even with your fist in your mouth. Vilja is one of the most popular and sophisticated Companions here, and she is standalone, no CMPartners Mod required, and she has an OCOv2 Compatibility Patch.

I dunno. Look around and tell us what interests you.

Enough for now, let's allow you to chew up all of this TL;DR garbage.

Cheers!